Pamphlet  No.  199,  1913.     (5c.  postpaid) 


National  (tttyilb  Habor  Qtomtmtfr* 

INCORPORATED 

105    East  22d  Street 
New  York  City 


CHILD   WAGES  IN   THE   COTTON 

MILLS:    OUR  MODERN 

FEUDALISM 


A.  J.  McKELWAY,  Washington,  D.  C. 
Southern  Secretary,  National  Child  Labor  Committee 


(Reprinted  from  the  CHILD  -LABOR  BULLETIN,  Vol.  II,  No.  1,  May,  1913,  containing 
the  addresses  and  proceedings  of  the  Ninth  National  Conference  on"  Child  Labor,  held  at  Jack- 
sonville, Fla.,  March  13-17,  1913,  under  the  auspices  of  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee.) 

t 


CHILD  WAGES  IN  THE  COTTON  MILLS :   OUR  MODERN 

FEUDALISM. 


A.  J.  McKelway,  Washington,  D.  C, 
Southern  Secretary,  National  Child  Labor  Committee. 


"We  work  in  his  mill.  We  live  in  his  houses.  Our  children  go 
to  his  school.  And  on  Sunday  we  go  to  hear  his  preacher."  This 
is  the  pathetic  plaint  of  the  cotton  mill  workers  of  North  Carolina, 
spoken  more  than  once  to  our  agent  in  North  Carolina.  It  is  re- 
freshing to  observe  that  at  least  the  system  of  feudalism  is  recognized 
by  the  workers  themselves.  The  expression  we  have  quoted  might 
be  amplified  with  regard  to  some  twenty  or  twenty-five  mills  in  the 
South  that  are  invariably  advertised  for  their  betterment  work,  with 
a  significant  silence  as  to  the  700  other  cotton  mills  that  merely 
bask  in  the  reflected  glory  of  the  "show  mills."  "We  also  go  to  his 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  when  he  has  built  one.  We  spend  our  leisure  time, 
after  the  eleven-hour  day,  those  of  us  who  can  read,  in  his  reading 
room.  Our  children  play  in  his  streets.  Our  cow  sleeps  in  his 
stable.  We  are  sent  to  his  store  to  buy  our  goods.  When  we  are 
sick,  or  hurt  in  the  mill,  we  go  to  his  hospital.  We  are  arrested 
by  his  constable,  and  tried  by  his  magistrate.  And  when  we  die  we 
are  buried  in  his  cemetery." 

I  have  been  assigned  the  discussion  of  two  apparently  unrelated 
subjects:  Child  Wages  in  the  Cotton  Mill,  and  Our  Modern  Feudal- 
ism. As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  two  themes  are  as  closely  related  as 
cause  and  effect,  as  I  shall  undertake  to  prove. 

The  children  of  the  cotton  mills  whom  we  undertake  to  bring 
within  the  operation  of  the  law  prohibiting  their  employment  are  the 
children  under  fourteen  years  of  age.  They  are  employed  mainly 
in  the  spinning  rooms,  and  are  principally  spinners,  doffers,  band 
boys  and  sweepers.  Children  under  fourteen  have  been  found  in 
other  operations  of  the  cotton  mills,  girl  spinners  sometimes  gradu- 
ating into  weavers  and  boys  occasionally  found  at  the  warping  ma- 
chine. The  doffer  boys  work  intermittently  and  much  has  been 
made  of  the  fact  that  when  they  have  replaced  the  empty  spools 

[2] 


Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills  3 

with  full  ones,  they  can  go  out  into  the  mill  yard  and  play  marbles. 
Nothing  is  said  of  the  eleven-hour  day,  preventing  all  attendance  at 
school  by  day,  and  making  the  night  school  oftentimes  an  added 
cruelty  to  tired  and  sleepy  children.  And  nothing  is  ever  said  of  the 
girl  spinners  who  do  not  work  intermittently  but  must  ever  be  on 
the  alert  to  watch  the  spinning  frames  and  tie  the  broken  threadj/^ 

/"Mr.  R.  M.  Miller,  Jr.,  of  Charlotte,  N.  C,  who  recently  ap-  \l^\ 
peared  before  the  Ways  and  Means  Committee  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  to  plead  for  protection  against  the  competition  of 
the  "pauper  labor  of  Europe"  in  the  manufacture  of  cotton  goods, 
once  went  into  print  to  say,  in  opposition  to  a  child  labor  bill  which 
proposed  the  raising  of  the  age-limit  for  girls  only,  from  twelve  to 
fourteen  years  of  age,  that  75  per  cent_of  the  spinners  of  North 
Carolina  were  fourteen  years  old  or  under!  It  is  one  of  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  cotton  mill  in  the  South,  that  spinning  is  work  for 
girls,  not  for  boys  or  women.  And  that  tradition  of  the  industry 
is  directly  in  the  face  of  all  the  teachings  of  medical  science,  as  to 
the  necessity  for  the  especial  care  and  protection  of  young  girls  at 
that  period  of  life.  Think  of  your  own  girls,  fathers  and  mothers, 
standing  at  a  spinning  frame  for  eleven  hours  a  day,  or  some- 
times a  night!  Of  295  spinners  found  under  12  in  Southern  mills, 
246  were  girls. 

Children's  Wages  High. 

Now  the  wages  which  these  children  get,  the  doffers  and  spin- 
ners, are  not  low,  considering  the  fact  that  it  is  child's  work.  The 
wages  are  comparatively  high,  considering  the  ages  of  the  children. 
The  Federal  Bureau  of  Labor  found  in  1908-9,  in  the  Southern  mills 
that  were  investigated,  the  agents  being  required  to  prove  the  ages 
of  the  children,  17  children  7  years  of  age,  48  of  eight  years,  107 
of  nine,  283  of  ten  and  494  of  eleven  years  of  age.  There  is  not 
much  remunerative  work  that  children  from  seven  to  eleven  years 
can  do  in  the  South,  not  very  much  that  children  12  to  14  years 
can  do. 

In  a  representative  South  Carolina  cotton  mill, 

doffers  of  12  years  were  paid  $3.54  per  week 

doffers  of  13  years  were  paid    3.92  per  week 

doffers  of  14  years  were  paid    5.04  per  week 

doffers  of  15  years  were  paid    4.75  per  week 


4  Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills 

and  dofTers  of  20  years  and  over  were  paid  $2.52  per  week,  while 
the  earnings  of  the  spinners  in  151  Southern  mills  were  $4.54  a  week 
and  scrubbers  and  sweepers  $2.96  a  week.  These  are  actual  wages 
paid,  not  the  wages  computed  for  full  time,  which  was  an  average 
of  62.7  hours  per  week. 

Adult  Wages  Lozv. 

But  here  is  the  impressive  thing  about  the  comparative  wage 
of  children  and  adults  per  week:  251  children  under  12  years  of  age 
earned  less  than  $2  per  week  and  731  children  of  twelve  and  thirteen 
earned  less  than  $2  per  week.  But  there  were  1,700  workers  from 
14  to  20  years  of  age  who  earned  less  than  $2  per  week.  And  1,085 
operatives  twenty-one  years  of  age  and  over  who  earned  less  than 
$2  a  week.  There  were  more  girls  from  18  to  20  years  of  age  earn- 
ing less  than  $2  per  week  than  there  were  of  girls  from  14  to  15 
earning  less  than  $2.  There  were  1,733  children  under  16  who  made 
from  two  to  three  dollars  a  week  and  there  was  almost  an  equal 
number,  1,712  workers,  sixteen  years  and  over,  who  earned  the  same 
wages.  Children  under  16  earning  from  three  to  four  dollars  a 
week  numbered  2,426,  and  those  from  16  to  21  and  over  earning 
from  three  to  four  dollars  a  week  numbered  2,597. 

Out  of  32,409  workers  in  the  cotton  mills,  whose  actual  wages 
per  week  were  copied  from  the  pay  rolls,  only  1,444  earned  from 
$8.00  to  $9.00  a  week,  and  one  of  these  was  a  boy  and  one  a  gir! 
under  12  years  of  age.  And  when  we  come  to  the  $12  limit,  only 
54  women  out  of  17,066  earned  from  $11  to  $12  a  week,  and  one 
of  these  was  a  girl  under  16  years  of  age,  while  241  men  out  of 
14,000  reached  that  wage  and  one  of  these  was  a  boy  under  16. 

I  know  of  no  employment  in  the  South  for  girls  under  14  that 
pays  so  well  as  work  in  the  cotton  mill,  and  only  one  employment 
for  boys,  the  demoralizing  messenger  service  which  is  vile  for  the 
night  shift  and  bad  for  the  day  shift  from  association  with  the  boys 
who  work  at  night.  And  their  wages  are  increased  by  the  tips  they  get 
for  serving  the  denizens  of  the  underworld.  But  the  facts  driven 
home  by  these  unquestioned  figures  is  that  the  wages  of  children 
are  high  as  compared  with  the  wages  of  the  adult  workers.  The 
same  general  result  is  shown,  though  with  higher  ages  for  children 
and  a  slightly  higher  scale  of  wages,  for  the  New  England  mills. 


Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills  5 

Here  is  the  temptation  which  the  cotton  mill  in  its  long  child- 
enslaving  history,  in  Old  England,  in  New  England,  in  Pennsylvania 
and  the  South  has  set  in  the  way  of  ignorant,  indifferent  or  poverty- 
stricken  parents.  And  who  are  mainly  responsible  for  this — the 
employers,  enlightened  and  educated  men,  able  to  read  and  to  ap- 
preciate the  full  consequences  of  the  child-labor  system  to  the  chil- 
dren, to  the  country  and  to  democracy  itself?  Or  the  parent  who 
supplies  the  demand  which  the  cotton  manufacturer  creates  ?  Whom 
does  the  enlightened  conscience  of  mankind  hold  responsible  for 
the  introduction  of  African  slavery  into  America  and  the  British 
possessions  to-day?  The  African  chief  who  sold  his  people,  already 
slaves  to  his  lordly  will,  or  the  British  or  New  England  slave- 
trader  who  bought  them  and  transported  them? 

And  now  perhaps  we  begin  to  see  the  relation  between  the 
comparatively  high  wages  that  the  children  receive  and  our  mod- 
ern system  of  feudalism.  Why  is  it  that  a  thousand  workers  21 
years  and  over  out  of  3,700  earn  less  than  $2  a  week  in  the  cotton 
mills?  It  is  because  a  thousand  children  under  14  can  earn  just 
as  much.  When  the  child  can  do  the  man's  job  or  the  woman's 
job,  the  man  or  woman  must  lose  the  job  or  take  the  wages  that  are 
paid  the  child.  There  is  no  escape  from  that  conclusion.  If  there 
is  anything  the  matter  with  the  logic  of  the  argument,  I  should 
like  to  have  it  pointed  out. 

When  17,517,  more  than  half  the  employes  whose  wages  were 
reported,  earn  less  than  $5.00  a  week,  I  know  they  earn  that  small 
sum  because  out  of  the  17,517,  there  are  7,825  children  under  16 
who  earn  the  same  wages.  In  any  child-employing  industry  the 
wages  of  the  adult  are  measured  by  the  wages  of  the  child., 

The  children  are  offered  wages  that  are  high  for  a  child  and 
the  children  are  employed,  40,000  of  them  in  the  cotton  mill  in- 
dustry according  to  the  manufacturers'  own  figures  in  1909,  as 
reported  by  the  Census  Bureau.  The  labor  unions  have  known  for 
a  long  time  that  child  labor  depresses  wages.  They  are  charged  with 
selfishness  in  their  advocacy  of  child  labor  reform.  Even  if  that  be 
true,  I  had  rather  see  a  man  selfishly  on  the  right  side  of  a  humane 
question  than  selfishly  on  the  wrong  side  of  it.  I  pay  the  cotton 
manufacturer  the  compliment  of  supposing  that  he  is  as  intelligent 
as  the  trade  unionist.  Then  he  knows  that  child  labor  depresses 
wages  and  he  holds  on  to  the  children  whom  he  employs  for  a  double 


6  Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills 

I 
purpose.     First,  because  in  the  cotton  mill,  the  child  can  do  the 

work  required.  It  is  even  claimed  that  the  child  can  do  it  better  than 
the  adult,  the  work  of  spinning  in  particular.  Then  because  he  can 
get  the  children  at  children's  wages,  he  naturally  believes  in  equal 
pay  for  equal  work,  and  the  employment  of  children  keeps  down  the 
wage-scale  for  all  his  employes.^  The  children  are  members  of  the 
family.  The  family  requirtfs  a  certain  amount  of  wages  to  live 
at  all.  The  wages  for  the  support  of  life  can  be  obtained  by  the  em- 
ployment of  several  members  of  the  family  and  large  families  of 
adult  workers  are  rare.  Therefore  let  the  children  work  or  let  the 
family  try  starving  for  a  while.  So  the  cotton  mill  workers  go 
to  work  as  children.  They  get  married  as  children.  They  become 
parents  of  other  children  while  they  are  children  themselves.  Their 
illiteracy  ranges  from  44  per  cent,  in  Georgia  to  48  and  50  per 
cent,  in  the  two  Carolinas — children  10  to  14  years  of  age.  Often 
they  forget  the  little  they  have  learned,  and,  as  a  South  Carolina 
manufacturer  recently  confessed  to  me,  there  are  practically  no 
mill  children  over  12  in  school.  They  have  been  condemned  for  life, 
with  few  exceptions,  to  an  unskilled  trade,  in  which  there  is  not 
hope  for  advancement  for  1  per  cent,  of  the  workers,  while  for 
99  per  cent,  the  maximum  of  efficiency  is  reached  before  manhood 
or  womanhood  is  reached. 

Feudalism. 

Meantime,  while  the  employes  have  become  thus  helpless  the 
employers  have  grown  more  powerful.  Forbidding  their  employes 
to  organize  in  labor  unions,  the  manufacturers  are  themselves  or- 
ganized in  State  and  National  Associations.  And  as  the  employes 
keep  poor  the  employer  grows  rich  and  becomes  independent  enough 
to  run  his  mill  regardless  of  a  temporary  shut-down.  Since  the  em- 
ployer owns  the  house  in  which  the  operative  lives  he  is  landlord 
as  well  as  employer.  The  only  freedom  yet  retained  by  these  help- 
less people  is  the  liberty  of  changing  their  feudal  lords,  and  there 
has  been  such  bitter  complaint  of  the  migratory  character  of  the 
cotton  mill  workers  that  I  look  to  see  some  baronial  edict  put  forth 
that  no  family  will  be  employed  at  one  mill  that  moves  from  another 
without  the  employer's  consent.  As  for  other  employment,  the 
operatives  have  often  told  me  that  after  a  few  years  or  even  months 
in  the  confinement  and  monotony  of  mill  work  they  were  unfitted  for 


Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills  7 

work  on  the  farms  from  which  they  had  come,  requiring  the  ex- 
ercise of  muscle  and  brawn. 

I  have  spoken  at  this  conference  my  individual  views,  for  which 
I  alone  am  responsible,  on  the  tariff  question  as  related  to  child 
labor.  [~K±  a  meetmg~on  February~i3,  last71iTT!rIaTlotte7-N7--Grr4he- 
Hard  Yarn  Spinners  Association  passed  the  following  resolutions: 
"We  are  opposed  to  any  material  reduction  in  the  present  tariff  that 
would  place  us  in  competition  with  the  mills  of  Europe  employing 
pauper  labor."  The  same  manufacturers  passed  resolutions  against 
any  advance  in  the  protection  of  the  working  children.  Now,  dis- 
regarding the  fact  that  with  a  tariff  that  is  practically  prohibitive 
on  cotton  goods  the  American  consumer  must  pay  a  price  for  those 
goods  made  artificially  high,  the  fact  stands  out  that  no  part  of 
that  added_j>rofit  finds  its  way  into  the  pay-envelope.  (If  the  report 
of  the  tariff  board  is  to  be  believed,  the  American  cotton  manu- 
facturer, without  any  protection,  has  the  advantage  now  against  his 
English  and  German  competitors.  But  the  point  I  have  often  made 
is  one  which  was  recently  endorsed  by  Miss  Ida  M.  Tarbell  in  a 
personal  letter,  namely,  that  to  make  the  employer  more  powerful 
through  excessive  profits  is  simply  to  make  the  employe  more  de- 
pendent. If  the  Southern  manufacturer  were  obliged  to  accept  the 
dividends  that  content  his  English  or  German  rival,  then  there  would 
be  less  of  a  sense  of  power  over  his  employes.  A  few  years  ago, 
there  was  an  attempt  in  a  certain  Southern  mill  district  to  organize 
the  employes  into  a  labor  union.  Some  progress  was  made  and 
the  mills  simply  shut  down  and  remained  in  masterly  inactivity  until 
the  employes  were  scattered  and  the  effort  to  organize  them  was 
given  up.  At  the  last  meeting  of  the  Virginia  legislature  the  cotton 
mill  men  opposed  a  very  slight  advance  in  the  child  labor  law  and  a 
manufacturer  from  Danville  took  a  solid  hour  to  tell  of  his  benevo- 
lence and  philanthropy,  so  far  as  his  beloved  employes  were  con- 
cerned, while  I  held  in  my  hand  a  letter  with  the  names  of  several 
girls  in  his  mill  who  had  been  discharged  because  they  had  tried 
to  form  a  union. 

A  book  has  recently  been  published  with  the  help  of  cotton 
manufacturers  defending  child  labor  in  the  cotton  mills.  I  do  not 
regard  it  as  an  authority  on  any  phase  of  the  problem,  but  as  one 
chapter  of  the  book  is  devoted  to  the  Pelzer  Mill,  and  it  seems  to 
have  been  so  pleasing  to  the  manufacturer,  who  is  called  "the  King 


8  Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills 

of  Pelzer,"  that  he  bought  140  copies  of  it  to  present  to  the  mem- 
bers of  the  South  Carolina  Legislature,  I  may  perhaps  quote  a 
paragraph  as  either  history,  or  fiction,  which  the  manufacturer 
seems  to  have  approved  and  enjoyed. 

Says  the  author:  "I  was  told  a  story  about  these  people  that 
not  only  aptly  illustrates  their  spirit  of  independence  (sic),  but  also 
the  tyranny  of  the  King  of  Pelzer.  The  labor  unions  of  the  North 
had  determined  to  organize  the  down-trodden  mill  operatives  of  the 
South,  and  they  sent  one  of  their  delegates  to  Pelzer.  .  .  .  But 
he  had  scarcely  arrived  in  the  place,  when  his  plans  and  movements 
were  reported  to  the  King.  The  King,  seated  at  his  office  desk, 
listened  to  the  report,  and  then  quietly  looking  up  at  the  clock  said: 
'The  next  train  leaves  at  eleven;  have  the  constable  put  him  on 
that  train.'  "  And  the  veracious  historian  comments  with  approval : 
"The  order  was  obeyed  as  effectively  as  though  it  had  been  a  royal 
or  presidential  decree  with  a  Swiss  Guard  or  a  company  of  Mexican 
Rurales  to  enforce  it."  This  is  treated  as  a  great  joke.  But  the 
point  is,  that  the  man  was  probably  a  trespasser  if  he  set  foot  in 
that  village  of  more  than  a  thousand  souls,  and  the  constable,  though 
presumably  an  officer  of  the  state,  was  only  carrying  out,  in  rather 
summary  fashion,  the  law  against  trespass  on  one's  private  estate. 

One  of  our  agents,  a  lovable  and  gentle  Christian  minister, 
went  to  a  cotton  mill  in  Georgia,  two  miles  from  the  railroad.  He 
engaged  a  room  at  the  hotel.  Going  first  to  the  school  he  took 
some  photographs  of  the  children.  Then  the  president  of  the  mill 
learned  of  his  presence  (he  had  told  his  name  and  his  errand),  and 
ordered  him  not  to  trespass  further,  saying  that  the  school  as  well 
as  the  mill,  and  even  the  streets  of  the  mill  were  his  property.  Fur- 
ther investigation  was  impossible,  and  the  minister  then  found  that 
his  room  at  the  hotel  was  forbidden  him,  he  was  warned  that  it 
would  be  unsafe  for  him  to  remain  in  the  village  that  night,  and 
he  had  to  return  to  the  railroad  station. 

A  mill  just  on  the  outskirts  of  Atlanta  then,  within  the  cor- 
porate limits  now,  after  I  had  made  some  rather  searching  investi- 
gations and  published  the  results,  put  up  signs  in  the  streets,  for- 
bidding anyone  to  enter  the  mill  community  without  permission. 
This  position,  however,  was  too  absurd  to  be  maintained  long.  An- 
other of  our  agents  wrote  a  little  sketch  once  entitled,  "A  Little 
Kingdom  in  Cotton-Land."    He  described  a  North  Carolina  cotton 


Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills  Q 

mill  town  where  the  whole  mill  community  stood  in  awe  of  the 
superintendent,  who  was  also  magistrate  and  exercised  all  the  func- 
tions of  landlord,  employer,  and  officer  of  the  law. 

I  remember  seeing  a  sign  on  the  fence  of  a  New  England  mill 
in  Georgia,  to  the  effect  that  if  a  boy  were  found  with  an  air-rifle, 
the  family  must  leave  the  mill  as  soon  as  the  lease  on  their  house 
expired,  and  the  houses  of  the  operatives  were  leased  for  a  term  of 
two  weeks.  It  may  have  been  a  good  thing  to  discourage  the  air- 
rifle  and  even  to  hold  the  parents  responsible  for  the  child's  mis- 
doings, but  one  would  rather  see  that  done  by  the  law  and  the 
officers  of  the  law  than  by  the  employer  and  landlord.  —=7 

Perhaps  the  most  pitiful  example  of  this  sort  of  feudalism 
is  the  petitions  which  are  brought  to  the  Legislature  from  the 
operatives  against  the  enactment  of  laws  for  their  own  benefit.  I 
have  seen  these  petitions,  some  of  them  signed  by  one  hand,  as  if 
they  were  simply  copied  from  the  pay-roll.  But  others  are  signed  by 
those  of  the  operatives  who  can  read  and  write,  while  the  majority 
make  their  mark.  They  petition  the  Legislature  not  to  shorten  the 
hours,  not  to  prevent  night  work,  not  to  abolish  the  child  labor  which 
keeps  their  wages  down,  not  to  authorize  inspectors  who  will  see 
that  their  limbs  and  lives  are  guarded  from  accident,  or  their  build- 
ings from  unescapable  flames. 

Two  years  ago  in  Georgia  we  attempted  to  change  the  limit  of 
66  hours  a  week,  12  a  day,  to  a  10-hour  day  for  children.  The 
Legislature  began  to  receive  petitions  from  the  mill  operatives  pro- 
testing against  any  shortening  of  the  hours.  Then  the  manufacturers 
thought  they  had  better  compromise  on  a  60-hour  week  and  the 
11-hour  day,  and  thereafter  the  operatives  petitioned  for  a  60-hour 
week,  but  sought  to  be  saved  from  the  dire  distress  of  working  less 
than  60  hours  a  week.  On  the  other  hand,  the  only  organized 
mill  I  know  in  the  South  recently  petitioned  a  legislature  for  a  nine- 
hour  day  for  women  and  an  eight-hour  day  for  children. 

The  same  feudalism  existed  in  New  England  cotton  mills  not 
many  years  since.  Eight  and  a  half  years  ago  I  took  a  trip  through 
the  New  England  mill  cities.  We  learned  that  at  Lowell  any  opera- 
tive who  was  found  even  attending  a  labor  union  meeting  was  dis- 
charged. Last  fall,  eight  years  afterward,  I  went  to  Lowell  again. 
I  found  that  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World,  generally  styled 
the  I.  W.  W.,  had  called  a  strike  at  one  mill,  because,  having 


io  Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills 

about  90  per  cent,  of  the  operatives  members  of  that  organization, 
they  insisted  that  the  mill  should  discharge  those  who  would  not 
join  them.  And  now  the  New  England  mills  are  falling  over  them- 
selves in  the  effort  to  get  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  to 
organize  them  and  thus  deliver  them  from  the  I.  W.  W. 

This  feudalism  is  sometimes  called  a  benevolent  feudalism,  be- 
cause it  occasionally  builds,  out  of  the  surplus  made  by  the  labor 
at  low  wages  of  the  workers,  schools,  hospitals,  libraries  and  so 
forth.  But  there  is  no  benevolent  feudalism.  The  expression  is  a 
contradiction  in  terms.  The  best  benevolence  would  be  to  increase 
the  pay-roll,  so  that  the  employes  might  do  some  of  these  things 
for  themselves. 

Yet  no  people  of  this  stock  has  ever  remained  long  in  bondage. 
It  is  American  stock,  with  the  English  and  Scotch  instincts  against 
every  form  of  tyranny.  In  South  Carolina  the  manufacturers  have 
lost  the  political  control  of  their  employes.  In  State  elections  the 
employers  vote  one  way  and  the  employes  the  other  and  whatever 
else  we  may  say  about  this,  the  employes  have  recently  been  on 
the  winning  side.  The  State  should  and  will  incorporate  the  mill 
towns  and  the  people  will  begin  to  learn  the  first  principles  of  local 
self-government  and  will  again  be  free  men.  Then  they  will  organ- 
ize sooner  or  later,  if  not  in  the  regular  labor  unions  then  in  the 
irregular.  They  will  slowly  learn  that  their  interests  lie  on  the  side 
of  the  reform  of  conditions  of  labor  for  children  and  women.  They 
come  of  the  stock  that  fought  at  Kings  Mountain  and  at  New 
Orleans,  at  Gettysburg  and  Chickamauga.  There  is  hardly  a  child 
of  the  cotton  mills  in  the  South  who  cannot  claim  descent  from 
some  soldier  of  the  wars  of  the  Republic.  They  will  not  always 
remain  helpless.  Compulsory  school  attendance  laws  will  soon 
begin  to  influence  the  education  of  the  next  generation,  at  least, 
and  when  they  learn  their  rights,  they  are  of  the  breed  that  has 
always  dared  maintain  them,  and  they  will  demand  more  hours  for 
rest  and  recreation,  and  a  fairer  share  of  the  profits  of  industry. 

The  Danger. 

Nor  can  a  democracy  encourage  a  feudalism  within  itself  save 
to  its  everlasting  hurt.  In  a  democracy  the  people  all  rule.  Also, 
the  people  are  ruled.    And  when  it  comes  to  the  people's  ruling  us 


Child  Wages  in  Cotton  Mills  n 

by  their  votes,  electing  our  governors  and  presidents,  initiating  and 
vetoing  legislation,  taxing  our  incomes,  we  grow  mightily  concerned 
over  the  intelligence  and  independence  of  the  electorate.  We  do 
not  like  to  trust  our  interests  now  and  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  our 
children  to  a  mass  of  voters  who  have  been  deprived  of  all  oppor- 
tunity for  an  education,  who  have  been  held  in  feudalistic  bondage, 
who  have  been  embittered  by  the  robbery  of  their  childhood,  who 
are  the  material  for  the  agitator,  and  the  prey  of  the  demagogue. 
Patriotism  is  partly  an  enlightened  instinct  of  self-preservation,  and 
patriotism  demands  that  we  abolish  the  system  under  which  large 
and  continually  increasing  masses  of  our  people  are  led  into  a  bond- 
age from  which  there  may  be  no  escape,  save  by  way  of  a  social 
revolution. 

Abolish  child  labor  and  the  child  can  go  to  school.  We  shall 
never  have  compulsory  education  in  the  cotton  manufacturing  states 
of  the  South  until  we  abolish  child  labor  first.  Then  the  wage- 
scale  will  rise  to  the  point  where  a  man  or  woman  can  support  the 
family,  When  educated  and  intelligent  workers  can  make  their  own 
terms  as  to  hours  and  wages  and  the  conditions  of  labor.  This  is 
not  theory,  but  history.  In  England,  after  a  century  of  struggle, 
these  things  have  happened  in  the  cotton  mill  industry,  and  the 
industry  itself  stands  on  a  high  plane  with  the  others.  There  is 
no  reason  under  heaven,  save  that  of  unenlightened  greed,  why  the 
same  industry  in  the  South  should  not  be  put  upon  a  better  basis 
than  anywhere  else  in  the  world,  so  that  it  shall  become  one  of 
which  we  may  all  be  proud,  rather  than  one  whose  profits  smell  of 
blood. 


Persons  who  contribute  $2  or  more  annually  toward  the  sup- 
port of  the  child  labor  campaign  are  enrolled  as  associate 
members,  $25  or  more  as  sustaining  members  and  $100  or 
more  as  guarantors  of  the  Committee.  Members  receive  the 
CHILD  LABOR  BULLETIN  and  other  publications  of 
the  Committee  and  are  thus  kept  in  touch  with  the  child  labor 
movement  throughout  the  country.  Remittances  may  be  sent  to 
V.  Everit  Macy,  Treasurer,  105  East  2 2d  St.,  New  York  City. 


